Haven 5 Blood Magic BOOK (12 page)

Brand walked among the stones. He could tell immediately this was a spot of elder power, of potent spirits. The Fae must walk here nightly.

But in the light of morning, they could not circle the mound and travel to the Twilight Lands. It was clear to them that the girl Mari had done so, with Piskin leading her. The trail led to this spot, but did not exit the glade again.

Brand frowned fiercely. “What kind of Wee Folk trickery is this, Tomkin? Had I not seen you fight with Piskin with my own eyes I’d think you were in league with him. You have led us here, after delaying long enough for the other to escape. Perhaps the girl was led with just such trickery.”

Tomkin fell flat upon his back, clutching his heart and head, imitating a swooning matron. “Whoop!” he cried. “You have stricken my heart with your horrible accusations! I’m truly mortified, and can’t bear to listen to further slander, lest I faint dead away.”

Brand’s hands were on his hips. It was all he could do to contain his right hand, which wanted to grasp Ambros and get some clear answers from his tiny friend.

“Speak plainly, manling.”

Tomkin hopped up again, and bounded around the tops of the tumbled stones. When he had circuited them twice, he came to stand upon the very tallest and stood there, looking down upon the River Folk, who all watched him with annoyance.

“This is not up to me, huge children,” he said. There was a devilish twinkle in his eye. He was enjoying their befuddlement, and that made dealing with him all the harder. “The choices here are all yours.”

“And what might those choices be?” asked Corbin. For once, he was of a more even temperament than Brand, who had had enough of Wee Folk riddles.

“Why, to pursue the maid—or to
not
,” said Tomkin, as if he were the simplest child in school.

“Pursue her? You mean to enter the Twilight Lands?” asked Corbin.

“Exactly.”

Telyn spoke up, frowning. “I don’t know, Brand. You said the Shining Lady came to warn us, to tell us that Oberon was seeking to destroy us. If that’s so, he may march an army of elves out of the mounds, appearing upon the Riverton Common tonight. What will our people do without warning? What will they do without your axe and your strong hand to guide them?”

Brand pursed his lips sourly. It was a dilemma. Should he continue his quest, marching into the Twilight Lands after this girl? If he did so, he moved even farther away from the borders of the Haven. He left his people open to attack. He growled aloud.

In a way, his axe and his role as Champion were a curse, he thought. He could not be everywhere at once. If his people needed him at home, that meant there was no one to go out and fix an injustice somewhere else. And yet, even if he did sit tightly on guard forever, nothing may ever happen back on Stone Island, meaning he’d wasted his time, and no wrongs had been righted.

Lastly, there was the axe itself. It scratched at his mind with each inactive day, urging him to go out and find evil and slay it. In fact, it was very free with its definition of evil, wanting mostly to slay something,
anything
, whenever it could find a hint of guilt. It would trump up any excuse and seek an immediate execution. It was the hardest judge in the Haven.

“What do you think, Tomkin? Do the Dead serve Oberon?”

Tomkin froze and pondered, taking the question seriously for once. “No. They do not. They are as fickle in their own way as the faerie, and work toward their own mysterious ends. They might float amongst the Fae, haunting the same places, but they do not serve us.”

Brand rubbed at his face, uncertain. Finally, he made a decision.

“I will not have it said that I came all this way to be turned away by the idle whispering of a ghost. The Dead may not serve the elves, but why should I trust their motivations? Perhaps they wish Piskin to escape. He has after all, gone to great lengths to steal this girl Mari. For what purpose? There must be one. I suspect she is to be a sacrifice of some kind. The Dead may wish to help him, to aid him in whatever dark plans he might have.”

“So, we will ignore the Lady’s warning?” asked Corbin.

“We will heed her warning, but not in a panic. Tomkin, I want you to strike out for Riverton. You can reach there in a day’s run I’ll wager. If you please, stand guard over my people until I can get back. I’ll wait until dusk, and then travel to the Twilight Lands to seek the maid. She might be right here at this spot, mirrored as it must be in Twilight. If such is the case, it will only cost us nine turns around these stones to reach her. I won’t leave without giving her that last chance.”

“Brand,” said Corbin seriously. “I must ask to take my leave of you then. I’m a Captain of the Haven Militia now, and I feel it is my duty to get back to my post. The council must be warned and the call to arms will go out. There will be a muster. If Oberon marches, he must be met with our best.”

Brand nodded. “Telyn will come with me as my second, then. Farewell cousin.”

They clasped arms, and looked about for Tomkin, but the other had already departed.

Brand shook his head at the behavior of the Wee Folk. One moment, they mocked you, the next they diligently worked on your behalf. They were irritating, but invaluable.

So, after the others left, he and Telyn settled down to lunch and to wait for the day’s end. It was difficult for Brand, who could barely listen to Telyn’s boundless enthusiasm for their wedding plans. He looked forward to the day, certainly, but his mind whirled with heavier thoughts. He did his best to smile and nod and murmur.

“Don’t you even care?” she demanded after one of his platitudes had fallen flat.

He sighed. He had hoped she would not see through him. He should have known better.

“I’m sorry my love, I’m distracted. This venture has taken a strange turn.”

She nodded and patted him. “I understand. But nothing has happened yet! It is only a lovely spring day, and I think we should make the most of any peaceful moment we have. Forget about ghosts and elves for a moment. I think tonight will take care of itself, and we should focus on other, more pleasant things while waiting.”

“You’re right, of course.”

“Then do you want to discuss the colors in detail?”

“Okay.”

She bounced and smiled hugely. “You won’t regret it!” she assured him.

But he already did.

Chapter Ten

The Kindred Bubble

When evening finally fell, Brand stood and stretched. In truth, he had enjoyed a relatively peaceful time with Telyn this fine afternoon. But the stone circle, which had been quaint and entrancing at noon, came to be increasingly sinister as night fell and the trees of the Deepwood seemed to
lean
inward over the clearing, making it smaller.

The blue stones, in fact, shone with a tiny nimbus of eldritch light when darkness finally came. As the last orange gleams of sunlight died and the sky was all a distant pink fire overhead, the shining nimbus that surrounded each blue stone grew. Brand suspected the shine had been there all along, but had been invisible in sunlight. The circling radiance grew into a silver outline that circuited each of the great tumbled stones individually. Brand was reminded of the mushroom circle he’d once found in the Deepwood. He wondered just how many such secret places existed within these ancient woods.

“It’s beautiful,” said Telyn, sighing by his side. As always, she found evidence of the Fae more entrancing than he did. He saw the beauty of it, of course, as well as any man, but it was a wild, dangerous kind of beauty. Unlike a clean waterfall, the beauty of a faerie mound was more like the bubbling crater of a volcano, filled with a lake of lava. Beautiful, but sinister.

Brand took two steps toward the stones, but did not yet begin to walk a path around them. Instead, he watched. It was best to see others make the trip before trying a new path for oneself.

After a dozen minutes had passed, during which the silvery outline of each stone had grown brighter still and the skies had birthed their first stars, something else joined them. A floating ball of fire, amber in color, glimmered slowly. The ball grew from nothing to something in less than a minute. It was the first of the wisps.

Telyn hugged him closely, and he put his arm around her. She could feel her excitement. He recalled that she had not been close to an active Fae mound for a long time. Not since the fateful night they had realized that the Pact was broken and their world had forever changed had she seen a sight such as this one. That night, only last year, seemed like an age ago to him now.

The wisp noticed their scrutiny, after a time. She floated closer to investigate. Brand made ready to grasp the axe, should he feel the need. The entrancing powers of a wisp were as nothing to him now, but still he was wary after he’d felt
real
power, that of the Shining Lady, on the night before. He never wanted to be caught underestimating the power of these creatures.

“Here she comes,” whispered Telyn, hugging him in excitement.

He smiled in spite of his mistrust, and hushed her, lest they scare off the tiny being. Amber in color, with golden eyes, golden hair and a single swath of silver light for clothing, the wisp was exquisitely beautiful. Brand knew that the vast majority of wisps were female, perhaps ten or twenty to one of the males. He thought that on the whole of it, the larger, rare male wisps must have had life pretty well in hand. Of all the Fae, the wisps had never harmed him, and had even helped him upon occasion. He would not go so far as to say he
trusted
them, but they never seemed to be outright evil in their intentions, unlike most of the others.

The wisp floated around the two of them, clearly as curious about them as they were about her. She zeroed in on the bone-white handle of Brand’s axe, where it poked up out of his pack. She buzzed around that spot, peering inside the pack.

Brand waved her away as a man might wave at pestering bee. She backed up, flapping hard, and tinkled sounds at him.

Telyn laughed. “She’s scolding you, Brand.”

And so she was. Brand smiled at the wisp, with half his mouth.

“Don’t touch the axe, little one. Either it will slay you, or I will.”

He had meant it as a warning, not a threat, but she whisked away from them just the same, heading back toward the circle of blue stones.

“Wait, wisp!” he cried after her. His heart ached to see her go. But he need not have worried, for he saw now that a dozen others floated amongst the stones. They were many varied hues. Pinks, mauves, one of sea-green and two of silver.

The amber wisp who had circled them turned and paused in her retreat.

Telyn took a step forward, pushing against Brand’s chest, indicating he should stay back. He got the message. The wisp had run from him. He did not want to frighten her further.

The wisp floated closer, and Telyn took several slow steps to meet her. Brand watched apprehensively as they stood a few feet apart, regarding one another. The tiny face watched Telyn with intense curiosity. He supposed she had not dealt directly with many humans before.

“I would ask something of thee,” said Telyn. “I would ask for news of this place. Has another of our kind passed here recently?”

The wisp drifted in the air uncertainly.

“We mean you no harm. We only wish to find a girl. One who is with child. One who is lost.”

Slowly, the wisp backed away, her golden eyes narrowing.

Telyn took two matching steps forward.

“We know who the father of the wisp is. We know the nasty little Wee One who escorts her. We only want to help her.”

Still, the wisp showed signs of wanting to escape. Brand knew they loved to gossip, and would tell tales all the day long if you were in a spot or a state of mind where you could hear their tiny voices. But this one seemed worried.

Telyn took a single step closer, and the blue shining stones now loomed all around her. The other wisps seemed surprised to have a human amongst the stones. They flittered about, tinkling unintelligible words amongst themselves. Every one of their reflective eyes shone as they watched Telyn.

“Have no fear, we know Puck is the father. We only want to help.”

At the second mentioning of Puck, the wisp’s attitude changed. She lifted her finger and pointed.

Telyn and Brand followed her gesture, but it was too late.

A flashing blade came out from behind one of the blue stones where its owner had been hiding. The blade shone silver-white in the eldritch light.

Telyn gave a cry, and fell forward, grasping one of the stones. She pulled out her own fine dagger, and put her other hand to her back.

“She’ll tell you nothing, little witch,” laughed a familiar little voice. It was that of Piskin, for it was he who had stabbed her in the back.

Brand had his axe out before Piskin had finished the sentence. He charged, roaring, into the stones. He chided himself in wild rage for letting Telyn walk off into the stones by herself. He had trusted the wisps, and they had betrayed him. He would slay them all, and Piskin last, only after he had sheared off his last arm and both his legs and left them in a twisting pile of his own skinny limbs.

“Cover your eyes,” he shouted to Telyn, and she, who was well-versed in his ways of fighting, did so immediately. Brand called for a bolt of light to flash from Ambros, and he delighted to hear the squeaks of dismay among the floating wisps. Their paper thin wings smoked. Their hands rubbed at their eyes. A few of them dropped to the grasses, stricken.